July 15, 2015

This is the fourteenth article talking about Poland, Europe, and the United States. To explore the entire collection, start here.

This is destined to be the final entry in the series that opened with a chronicle of my journey from Poland to the United States, only to veer into some of the most interesting social differences between America and the old continent. There are many other topics I could still write about - anything from the school system, to religion, to the driving culture - but with my parental leave coming to an end, I decided to draw a line. I'm sure that this decision will come as a relief for those who read the blog for technical insights, rather than political commentary :-)

The final topic I wanted to talk about is something that truly irks some of my European friends: the belief, held deeply by many Americans, that their country is the proverbial "city upon a hill" - a shining beacon of liberty and righteousness, blessed by the maker with the moral right to shape the world - be it by flexing its economic and diplomatic muscles, or with its sheer military might.

It is an interesting phenomenon, and one that certainly isn't exclusive to the United States. In fact, expansive exceptionalism used to be a very strong theme in the European doctrine long before it emerged in other parts of the Western world. For one, it underpinned many of the British, French, Spanish, and Dutch colonial conquests over the past 500 years. The romanticized notion of Sonderweg played a menacing role in German political discourse, too - eventually culminating in the rise of the Nazi ideology and the onset of World War II. It wasn't until the defeat of the Third Reich when Europe, faced with unspeakable destruction and unprecedented loss of life, made a concerted effort to root out many of its nationalist sentiments and embrace a more harmonious, collective path as a single European community.

America, in a way, experienced the opposite: although it has always celebrated its own rejection of feudalism and monarchism - and in that sense, it had a robust claim to being a pretty unique corner of the world - the country largely shied away from global politics, participating only very reluctantly in World War I, then hoping to wait out World War II up until being attacked by Japan. Its conviction about its special role on the world stage has solidified only after it paid a tremendous price to help defeat the Germans, to stop the march of the Red Army through the continent, and to build a prosperous and peaceful Europe; given the remarkable significance of this feat, the post-war sentiments in America may be not hard to understand. In that way, the roots of American exceptionalism differed from its European predecessors, being fueled by a fairly pure sense of righteousness - and not by anger, by a sense of injury, or by territorial demands.

Of course, the new superpower has also learned that its military might has its limits, facing humiliating defeats in some of the proxy wars with the Soviets and seeing an endless spiral of violence in the Middle East. The voices predicting its imminent demise, invariably present from the earliest days of the republic, have grown stronger and more confident over the past 50 years. But the country remains a military and economic powerhouse; and in some ways, its trigger-happy politicians provide a counterbalance to the other superpowers' greater propensity to turn a blind eye to humanitarian crises and to genocide. It's quite possible that without the United States arming its allies and tempering the appetites of Russia, North Korea, or China, the world would have been a less happy place. It's just as likely that the Middle East would have been a happier one.

Some Europeans show indignation that Americans, with their seemingly know-it-all attitudes toward the rest of the world, still struggle to pinpoint Austria or Belgium on the map. It is certainly true that the media in the US pays little attention to the old continent. But deep down inside, European outlets don't necessarily fare a lot better, often focusing its international coverage on the silly and the formulaic: when in Europe, you are far more likely to hear about a daring rescue of a cat stuck on a tree in Wyoming, or about the Creation Museum in Kentucky, than you are to learn anything substantive about Obamacare. (And speaking of Wyoming and Kentucky, pinpointing these places on the map probably wouldn't be the European viewer's strongest feat). In the end, Europeans who think they understand the intricacies of US politics are probably about as wrong as the average American making sweeping generalizations about Europe.

And on that intentionally self-deprecating note, it's time to wrap the series up.

I find it difficult to equate these conflicts to WWII, the Cold War, the ongoing mess in the Middle East, or the wide range of parallel diplomatic engagements all around the world (North Korea, Russia, etc) - but I honestly don't claim that my perspective is uniquely true; I think it's quite defensible to take a different view.

Michael, if you listen to podcasts, I strongly recommend 'Backstory with the American History Guys' (http://backstoryradio.org/). Especially this episode: http://backstoryradio.org/shows/city-upon-a-hill-american-exceptionalism/